City Council - Regular Meeting

Hello and welcome. It's great to see everybody here tonight. We appreciate you. We will open this meeting. Oh, actually, we're here on the City Council regular meeting Tuesday, September 1st. And we will begin this meeting with the land acknowledgement. The land that Eureka rests on is known in the WIAT language as . Past actions by local, state, and federal governments remove the Wiyot and other indigenous peoples from the land and threaten to destroy their cultural practices. The city of Eureka acknowledged the Wiyot community, their elders both past and present, as well as future generations. This acknowledgement demonstrates the city's commitment to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism. Okay, and before our roll call, Councilmember Bauer, would you be willing to state what your reason is for being on Zoom?

Yeah, good evening. I'm out of town taking care of my elderly parents.

Great. Thank you so much.

And with that, can we get a roll call, please? Councilmember Castellano? Here. Councilmember Moulton? Here. Councilmember Fernandez? Here. Councilmember Bauer? Here. Councilmember Contreras-Soloche? Here. Mayor Bergel?

Here. Okay, and we will now, for all who care to join me with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

And we had no closed session this afternoon. But I did want to make an announcement. It will just take me a moment to find it. I thought I screenshotted it. 9-11 is coming up. And there will be a presentation and stair climb that day down at Hilfiger. I'm looking at the chief back there. It starts at, is it 9 or 10? 9 a.m. Last year there were speakers. And it's really an incredible space to be in. I was there last year and was able to speak and climb the stairs. Our firefighters and first responders climbed the stairs, the same amount of stairs that the people did during 9-11. in all of their gear. And it's a pretty incredible thing to see. I will not be there because I will be out for a couple of weeks. I'm having surgery this coming Thursday. So just so you know, I won't be at that event. And then next council meeting will be run by Mayor Pro Tem Castellana. So I just want to share my appreciation for her. taking that on. And now we will move to our presentations with the housing element update presentation on public engagement with Senior Planner Flederick. Okay. Okay.

Okay, great. Okay, good evening, council members. Today I'm going to be presenting an update on the outreach that we've done thus far for the housing element. So what we've heard and who we've heard it from. As you may know at this point, the city is responsible for showing we have a realistic and demonstrated capacity to accommodate 1,740 new units or new homes in the next planning period. So since planning doesn't happen in a vacuum, we went to the community and asked them what their lived experience was or is and gathered their input on what their housing needs are. So starting in June and going until August, we did several outreach attempts. including a community survey through our Talk Eureka, which is an online hub where we got a lot of participation. We had about 250 responses, and all of these responses played into the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Questionnaire, which is a new state requirement to make sure that areas that are low-resourced are getting more resources and higher-resource areas are not being flooded with resources. We did individual outreach to over 90 organizations. So we reached out to them and asked how they would like to participate in the housing element, whether it was a presentation, an individual survey, or a tabling event. And we've got a lot of participation, but I won't be sharing about that today. I'm going to focus on the results from our community workshop that we did on July 14 and the tabling that we've done at over 20 community events. Okay, so let's get into the Housing Element workshop. On July 14th, we hosted a drop-in workshop at the Warfinger building, and we had about 95 participants. And everybody that came in got a little workbook that explained the different activities, and then they got a stamp as they participated in each activity. This is the list of workshop activities that we conducted, and I'm going to go into those further. But something that made this workshop unique was the different accommodations that we had. So we had a kid zone where kids could go and build their own cities with blocks and draw what they wanted their cities to look like. We had different prizes. The Humboldt County Association of Government came and tabled about transportation-related issues or concerns. We had food for different dietary restrictions, a raffle, and we also had Hmong and Spanish translators. And all the workshop activities were actually translated, so anybody who requested Spanish or Hmong, they got an associated workbook that was translated.

Nice.

Okay, so let's get into the activities. This was a live poll or a word cloud through Mentimeter. And we asked people in one word or phrase, why do you live or want to live in Eureka? And the bigger or the more contributions one word got, the bigger it got. So you can see that community, walkability, weather, nature, old town art are some of the subjects that got the most contributions. The next one was a hopes and concerns board. So we had a bunch of different post-its on the back of the Warfinger building that had five different topics, accessory dwelling units, affordable housing, homelessness, livable neighborhoods, and others. And we asked people to contribute what their hopes and concerns were for these different topics as they related to housing. And then these were the common themes. I went through every comment and digitized them, and they are all on our Talk Eureka website, which there's going to be a link after. But these are the major themes. So for accessory dwelling unit, people hope for faster permitting, more incentives, and making it easier to build. But they're concerned that the cost of developing and for permitting accessory dwelling units is still too expensive and that there's a real contractor shortage. So the people who are able to build accessory dwelling units are not accessible. For affordable housing, people want to see more housing at all income levels and mixed income housing. They also want to see stronger rent control for renters and unhoused people. And people identified that affordability and affordable housing is still out of reach to a lot of the people who need affordable housing. And the affordable housing that is available has very long wait lists. For homelessness, people identified there needs to be more mental health and support services. So this just doesn't look like housing. It looks like that permanent supporting assistance as well, specifically for mental health and addiction. And that the resources that we do have are not making it to the people who actually need it. And that there's a general stigma against unhoused people from the housed community. For livable neighborhoods, people identified walkability and bikeability major themes across all of these across the livable neighborhoods. People want to be able to walk from Old Town at any point of the city of Eureka. They want to see more parks and more mixed use development. So commercial development in residential neighborhoods. And then they have concerns for traffic safety and specifically for biking safety. and a general NIMBY attitudes of people who don't want development or have mixed use development in residential neighborhoods. And people don't want to see Victorian character lost in our historic homes. For the other, I actually had a hard time figuring out which was a hope and concern because they could be seen both ways. So people want to see more youth activities. They hope to see more economic development. And I'm sure that they're a little bit concerned about renter support. Okay, the next one is the token trade-off activity. So we asked people, how should the city of Eureka allocate our limited funds? This is supposed to replicate, we want to do everything we possibly can, but we don't have, like we have a limited amount of resources, how should we spend it, and what are your priorities? So depending on someone's home ownership status, they got a different colored pompom, and then they could cast six votes across 11 different strategies, which were contained in three different goals. The first goal is building more housing. The second is keeping housing affordable and in good condition. And the third is preventing and ending homelessness. And then these strategies are specific actions the city could take to meet these goals. So these are the results. These are the three goals that I mentioned, building housing, keeping housing affordable and in good condition, preventing and ending homelessness. This is a bar chart with normalized data of the owner, renter, and other. Owner is blue, renter is orange, and other is gray. Normalized meaning we didn't actually get more other contributions, but we wanted to put them on the same scale so we could understand the percentage of votes. If we break it up into the different homeownership, we see that renters believe that we should be building more housing. Owners and other identify keeping housing more affordable. And then all groups equally voted for strategies between preventing and ending homelessness. Okay, now we're gonna get into the specific strategies for the first goal of building more housing. So owners believe that we should be acquiring land to make it available for affordable housing development, similar to what we did in the last housing element cycle. Renters believe that we should be updating city regulations to make it easier and faster to build housing. And people who identified as other think that we should encourage accessory dwelling units through pre-approved plans, loans, and other incentives. And I should clarify here, other may have been someone who didn't want to tell us their home ownership status or maybe was in between living conditions. We didn't ask them to specify it any further than that. Okay, the next goal or the next strategies within the keeping housing affordable and in good conditions goal, homeowners, renters, and others all believe that we should be registering and monitoring and enforcing the maintenance of vacant and blighted properties and asking them or making them bring it back to a productive use. The last goal of preventing and ending homelessness. Renters and others believe that people experiencing homelessness should be able to move into permanent supportive housing. And then people identified as others were split between rapid rehousing, homelessness prevention, and housing resource services. So next was a mapping activity. At our workshop, we had a huge 15 foot by 15 foot map that we laid on the floor and we gave everyone a colored dot and we told us where should we put housing? And we had, you can see us on the table, we had examples of different types of housing, moving people away from the idea that a home is just a single family house to see how we could get creative with these housing developments. And then they can go and put the dot on a place where they think we should develop housing. Each dot had a number where they could then write a sticky note with a corresponding number of a suggestion for what type of housing they'd like to see. And we had 124 sites that were identified. Actually, not sites. Contributions, like multiple people might have contributed to one site, which I then digitized and is also on the Taquerico website. The Bayshore Mall was the one that had the most contributions with 16 dots. And then we had some fun ones. So we had a photo booth where we asked people, what is your long term housing goal? And we had these little cutouts of word clouds and they could either contribute one of the pre-made housing goals, which were like, have enough room for my family, downsize, or they could write in what their housing goals were and they could take a Polaroid and take them home. And then some more other things. There's the Humboldt County Association of Government with some tabling supplies for transportation planning. You can see the little handout that we had for kids to draw on in the blocks. And then we also had raffle prizes. So a golf game, tickets to the zoo, one of our little prizes, and a custom street sign. So this is the results from our tabling. We tabled at over 20 events, and we had three different activities. Community priorities, lived experience, preferred housing choice types. These were also color coded so we could understand the different home ownership between owner, renter, and other. I did want to shout out that we went to the Housing Authority's Ice Cream Social where we were able to talk to people who are using public housing or housing vouchers so we could talk to low-income renters. And we also participated in Unity Day with Uplift and the community conversations on homelessness at Synapsis. And we got to talk to a lot of the unhoused population and got their data as well. So the first activity was community priorities. We asked the community to place up to three tallies next to issues that should be the highest priority for the city to address over the next eight years, and they had 11 options. And they want to do all of them, but this is, again, to mimic we only have limited resources. How should we apply them? Okay, so overall, everybody agrees that we should be increasing affordable housing options. But then when we break it into the different housing ownership statuses, we see that owners want to prioritize revitalizing vacant properties and creating more accessible housing. Renters believe we should be preserving and improving the existing housing and supporting first-time home ownership opportunities. And people identified as others believe that we should prioritize fair and equal access to housing, increasing affordable housing, and building more housing overall. I want to clarify here that people who are identifying as other in many of these cases were unhoused individuals. The next one is lived experiences. So we asked people if they've ever looked for housing in Eureka or live in housing in Eureka, what challenges have they experienced? And they have 12 options here. And they can also write in ones that we might have missed on the back. so everybody is agreeing that housing costs are too high then when we look at the different home ownership statuses i thought it was really interesting that the people who are reporting no housing or no housing challenges experienced are dominantly homeowners while renters are finding that houses are the wrong size or type for my needs so Maybe they're only finding rentals with like two rooms, but they need three or four or that it's housing is too far from work. And a lot of those cases where people are working in Arcata and living in Eureka, but they want to work in Eureka. And then people who identify as other report problems with a landlord or experiencing discrimination. And I also want to clarify here that when I was talking to unhoused individuals, the discrimination that they were experiencing was maybe they hadn't been incarcerated, and that is on their record. And then people who are renting don't want to rent to them. Or they're using vouchers, and they're not being accepted for vouchers. And a lot of people reported discrimination against pets. So a lot of people not being able to find housing because they have pets. OK, this was a fun one. So these are all images of different types of housing. And depending, again, on their ownership status, they could place a colored dot on what type of home they would want to live in. So we asked people, if you were to pick up and move tomorrow, what would your home look like in Eureka? I'm so happy to report that tiny homes beat single family homes. So that's great. Owners believe that single family homes and tiny homes would be their preferred living choice. OK, these transitions are a little funky. But renters are more interested in live-work collectives. And then people who identified as others are mixed-use development and tiny homes. And then for this one, others were also kids. We had a lot of kids participate in this one. OK, this is the summary and next steps. So the common themes between all of the groups is everybody wants more affordable housing. It doesn't matter what your home ownership status is. People believe that Eureka is lacking available affordable housing. Everybody acknowledges that homelessness and housing instability is a serious problem in the city of Eureka. And that is not limited to just the housing, but also the resources associated with providing permanent supportive housing. People believe that our vacant and underutilized properties are a real problem and they should be brought up to a more productive use. Housing costs are just too expensive. And we have an interest in a range of different housing types. We are transitioning out of the single family home housing development into a more creative housing type. And if it were available, people would be interested. Okay, so as I was talking to the community, I learned that renters are very concerned about the rising cost of rent with their wages not matching it, and they want to see more rent control. They're also concerned that the available rental units are in poor condition and that landlords are not maintaining the rental units. Owners believe that we should be documenting, monitoring, and encouraging productive reuse of our vacant spaces. And they're also very concerned about parking impacts. So as affordable housing is being developed with no parking and the major transit center means that, or if you're within a half mile of a major transit center, you don't need to provide parking, they're very concerned about what that means for commercial development. And then unhoused people believe that there are systematic barriers to being able to obtain housing. So discrimination against criminal records or the discrimination against housing vouchers. So overall, I just wanted to show who we're reaching between these different outreach types. When we're tabling, we got 42% engagement from renters, 27 from homeowners, and 31% of others. During our workshop on July 14th, we had 57% participation in homeowners, 35% of renters, and 8% of others. I wanted to highlight that when we're tabling, we're actually capturing the demographic of Eureka much better compared to the census data. Our citywide percentage of renters is 52%, and homeowners is 48%. And this doesn't capture others, but we didn't have a lot of participation from unhoused individuals. So when we're tabling, we're really getting a better representation of the people who live here. OK, so what's next? The housing element is made up of implementation measures, goals, and policies and programs for community development, housing development, and also the maintenance of existing housing stock. We are going to be using this outreach data to go into those implementation measures and also to go into our Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing questionnaire, which will give us a better idea of what the community is actually experiencing and what we're missing. But we also have a few other things to consider. We have to do an analysis of government and non-government constraints. We have to review the current plan to see what's working and what's not working. We want to review the census data, demographic data, economic development data, and housing data. And finally, we have to do the site inventory, which is a very big push. We have to identify which sites could actually be eligible for more housing. I will be doing a lot of outreach on this, so more on that coming up. So the Taquerica survey that we have, the Taquerica community survey closed yesterday on September 1st. So I will have results from that coming very soon. We are going to be doing a lot of outreach for the site inventory to find parcels that want housing development. So if you know of anyone, please reach out to me. And then we have had amazing participation from all of our awesome organizations at the City of Eureka. I have, I think, over 65 interviews that we're wrapping up and I will be presenting on that soon. And then, like I mentioned earlier, all of the results can be found on our Talk Eureka site under Housing Element Workshop Results. And if you want to check them out further, they're available in that QR code or at that link below. And that's it.

Well, thank you for that amazing presentation and all the work you did on that. Are there any questions for Senior Planner Flederick?

Council Member Fernandez?

That's a lot of information. And I'm going, no, no, no, don't apologize. I'm grateful for it.

This is what we asked for, like, what, back in June?

Yeah, so I think you did an excellent job on that, you know, you and the team. I'm curious, you know, it was about 250-ish response, correct? And you had a good breakdown of who responded in the various methods. And so like a 1% response rate for our count of approximately 27,000, how is that for a response rate for what we typically do?

Well, so that's interesting. The community survey through Talk Eureka is actually separate. So when I was tabling all, I had like, I think over 1200 responses when I'm tabling. And then in addition to that is the 250 on our online survey. So that was from just people hearing about it. Okay. Yeah.

OK, so it was actually more this was just from the tabling and the workshop. Yep. So and I mean, even for the workshop, almost 100 people. That's that's impressive. So I think better than any of our town halls or just personally speaking anyway. So thank you for that. I did have a few questions, though, about getting into less of the logistics on the survey, but more about the folks that you talked to with the others, the unhoused, systemic barriers. What were they talking about specifically? Is it just the criminal record, potentially, and the Section 8 housing voucher? Aren't there already discrimination laws in place against that? So what are they experiencing then, and what might the potential recourse be if that question has to go to someone else?

Yeah. They're not supposed to discriminate against those things, that's for sure. Right. It's interesting. A lot of people said that there are so many resources to help people get connected with housing types. But the wait lists are so long to actually get into those affordable housing or public housings. And I've heard from our interviews that some people just kind of lose hope. So after they've been on wait lists for so long, like a year or two years, it's sometimes hard to track them down. And I think that's the systemic barrier that they're talking about is there's resources. Locally, we're doing a lot to get people connected to housing. But then the housing resources that are available are just really limited. Yeah.

And so what would be the current method for reporting then if someone did feel as though they'd been discriminated against either for a criminal record or for Section 8 voucher or some sort of housing assistance that they had?

Hmm. I believe, I'm not positive, but I believe for the voucher program, they could go to the housing authority, but they can also talk to our care and uplift teams who help connect people to housing, but I'm not positive on that one.

They would typically refer them to other resources like LISNIC Legal Services in Northern California, very active in that area. Okay. Or if it's the housing authority, it'd be the housing authority, or if it's, Development run by a property manager. There's other resources economic, but the Resource Center and the Muni would be the spot for people to go if they have that Ending on their situation. Okay, and so then that would be the same if it were in hospitable conditions or if they were having similar issues with that would work but code enforcement Development Services Department before more building code violations or unsafe living conditions would be LISNIC would eventually get you there as well, and so would the Uplift Research Center. But if it's a specific building code violation or safety issue, it would be go to our building division.

Thank you. And just lastly, yeah, I'm again grateful for all the information that you've captured because at least what folks were telling you, the workshop and tabling reflects what we've already been doing vis-a-vis walkable and bikeable traffic safety, trying to maintain the Victorian character, all that fun stuff. So thank you.

Councilmember Moulton Thank You mayor and thank you for that presentation. Of course all the work that goes into it this Gotta Come at this problem from many many angles. I was curious one thing that stuck out to me was folks talking about Improving the process of building streamlining the process of building either for development or for ad use and Do you and I know that that is a thing that we have been working on and staff has been working on for many years Trying to streamline that process and make it easy and painless is there. Oh, I see Kristen director Kenyon is her Perkin up there Is there room for for further streaming or I guess my question is for the folks that felt like that was a priority did they have a suggestion or a specific like stumbling block or something that they were talking about and

Director Kenyon here. We're actually presenting to the Planning Commission next Wednesday night about we did our government constraints analysis and we do have some ideas for how to streamline our regulations more. What was I going to say before that? Oh, what people are saying. It's really interesting. In talking with the community, we seem to find that people who have developed recently have way more positive things to say than people who haven't developed recently. So I think we have a reputation of being difficult that maybe isn't reflecting what our current reality is. And so we will definitely... have an action in our housing element to get out the word about all of the regulatory improvements that have happened. Because I don't think people, you know, they tried to build an ADU 10 years ago and they were shot down because they didn't have enough replacement parking. And now you don't need that, you know. So we definitely need to get out the word about what. But in terms of additional things we can do, I've heard from city council, you know, how important it is to create more opportunities for affordable home ownership. So one thing we're definitely looking into, which I've got Ben Noble helping me with is thinking through how we can potentially allow smaller lots, particularly in the R1 zone. Right now, it's 5,000 square foot minimum. I think in the R2 and R3, we made it 2,000 square foot minimum. And a lot of our housing, our home ownership opportunities we've gotten during this last cycle have been from small subdivisions where people have... split a 6,000 square foot lot into two or three lots and sold off a piece of it. And so a lot of our city is zoned R1. So if we just lowered the lot size in R1, that could really get us a lot more housing opportunity. And then another thing would be in R2 and R3, I think the dwelling units per acre limit really restricts housing in our mixed use zone we just use form like building height and square footage to regulate development and in our but in our residential districts we have a dwelling unit per acre maximum and so sometimes People will max out on dwelling units well before they max out on their building height, site coverage, and floor area standards. So we're kind of, in that situation, we're incentivizing larger, more expensive units. And that doesn't seem like what we want to do. So that's another opportunity. But our mixed use zones, we are not seeing any issue with our regulations in terms of housing. That's not at all what is constraining housing in our mixed use zones.

OK, thank you. That's good to hear. I know that a lot of effort's been made in that direction in the last few years. I'm glad to hear that the folks who are actually experiencing that process are seeing the positive changes.

The thing that recent developers are struggling with are just the cost of construction. And one thing that we can look into on our end on that is our fees that we charge. Although we do need the money to pay for our water and sewer infrastructure, but some communities are looking into fee deferrals where you don't have to pay it all up front. You have more time to pay. Like maybe you've already occupied the building and you're getting some rent and then you can finish paying. So that's something we could potentially explore. Interesting.

Thank you.

Council Member Fernandez and then Castellano. Castellano, do you want to go first?

Thank you. I do think we should look into a fee deferral program, understanding that we do need those impact fees to pay for the cost of implementation, but that there may be some ways to kind of spread them out over time so that folks who are building housing aren't taking as much of a risk right off the front in getting the housing built. Something that has come up in other conversations too is just the cost of insurance as well and how there are all these other rising costs and how that also in terms of homeownership creates limitations around things like condos or townhomes and things like that because they're they're just difficult to ensure so that has also come up in conversation thank you councilmember Bauer and then Fernandez

Thank you. Let me lower my hand here. Yeah, great, super interesting stuff, you know, and I do think, you know, permitting cost is a factor, but more importantly, you know, people recognize that we have, you know, vacant land, you know, houses that need to be fixed up. I think what we need to figure out and the state needs to figure out is how do we finance this work? I think people would be more inclined to develop ADUs, you know, split houses up into multiple units, but I mean, it's really what Director Kenyon said, too, you know, the cost, building materials, finding contractors, but, you know, more importantly, like, you're looking at $250,000 to build an ADU. People that want to do it can't afford it. And I don't know what we can do. I think we need to have conversations with the state. If we could get people loans that are 2%, 4%, they would be more inclined to take this stuff on and help us out with our housing. So I appreciate the presentation and the conversation. I think we have a lot of work to do to really figure out the financing component of this whole thing. Because I think permit fees... That would be helpful, you know, reducing them, eliminating them, but the real issue is materials, contractors, and frankly, financing. So, thanks.

Thank you. Council Member Fernandez.

thank you um i'd be amenable to to the idea of fee deferral just as long as you know it doesn't get away from us over the next 20 25 years uh like deferred maintenance had to some some extent uh i'm curious though uh to council member bauer's point and uh director kenyon maybe maybe you might be able to help piece this together, but if we're talking about fee deferrals, what would be, what's the cost for an ADU, at least in terms of the fees and such? Because I understand the materials component is the most onerous, but what is it in terms of fees typically?

It's not very high for ADUs for fees because we waive water and sewer impact fees for ADUs. And then ADUs often connect to the main home's utilities. So they don't need to pay, in that case, they don't have to pay the connection fees either. And those are the biggest fees by far that we charge are the sewer and water impact and connection fees.

Right, so really what it's coming down to for ADUs and private homeowners in that sense is really the construction, the labor, the materials. Yeah, there's not a whole lot we can do about that. Well, there is. Advocacy at the state level, but yeah.

There is. I mean, I think the ADU, we're coming back to you guys next council meeting with a report on the ADU program. I think that the financing part of it that... Council member Bauer referred to as people don't have the equity in their home in order to finance those things and so having a low interest loan to get the construction done and then once it's completed to refinance and have that ability to buy out that loan that's the whole intent of the ADU program I think that that's a big sticking point for folks is that they don't have the capital to

To make that happen and financing it is difficult because they don't have the equity in their home to cover it Yeah, I'd be interested in it and this conversation might come later But I have to say the question so I don't forget it later on But for the folks that are currently interested then in building ad use I'm curious how many of them have paid off their housing or where they might be in their mortgage process If we might be able to collect that information

So we could. I think we'll get more information once we fully implement the ADU program, and we'll have the ability to get that data. The reason why it didn't come to this meeting is they're working on the finalized application for it, and we'd like to be able to announce when the opening is going to happen of that so people can start applying.

Thank you. And then my last piece is, you know, going back, there was, I think it was from the renters there, there was an interest or a curiosity piqued about live workspaces. How do we manage that in terms of development? Or have we have we considered that previously?

We allow them. And there's a building code section all about them. So they're theoretically totally doable. It's just a matter of getting somebody interested in developing them.

Got to move from the theory to the praxis then, now.

Yeah. There's a bunch of types of housing that we don't have that we want. And so I foresee a housing element action that hopefully we can partner with the other local jurisdictions on is to do more research on those particular housing models and types and figure out what are the barriers, what are the opportunities.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Councilmember Contreras-Deloach, then Castellano.

Yeah, well, first of all, thank you. I appreciate the level of detail that went into this. And I think, excuse me, just an observation. You can see the tension between, you know, those who are already in a comfortable position are, you know, own a home and are, you know, feeling pretty set and settled versus, you know, the group of people that are out there in the rental marketplace and are watching that volatility inside the rental market here. So, just kind of further validation for continuing to build. One of the questions I had, and I think for either you or Director Kenyon, I know I've spoken with you about minimum lot sizes, kind of changing those down. What are we at now as far as, excuse me, lot splits specifically for the purpose of selling, building to sell a portion? What is the minimum that we're at right now, and what are we looking at?

In the R1 low density residential zone, it's a 5,000 square foot minimum. So you need 10,000 square feet to subdivide. In the R2 and R3 medium and high density residential, it's 2,000 square foot minimum. But there is this starter home. Revitalization Act, which is similar to SB 9. And I'm surprised that nobody ever talks about it. It's already allowed in Eureka, but nobody's ever applied for it. And it allows you to build up to 10 homes and subdivide up to 10 additional lots as small as 600 square feet. By right without sequa without a public notice or hearing And people are just not using this provision. It did not get the publicity that SB 9 Got and I don't know why it's not being used.

I don't really understand And that one that is that With an existing unit on the property or that's if somebody purchased a lot and then began doing splits.

I

In the multifamily, it could be there's an existing unit. And then you can divide the rest of the space up to 10 additional lots. And each one can have up to, like, it's up to 10 lots and up to 10 homes. And there's some provision that you basically, the point of it is that you're selling, you're going to build houses on those lots and sell them separately. okay so then our minimum is actually 600 if you use that provision yeah what's the name of the provision again the starter home revitalization act it's in california government code has anybody heard of this i hadn't okay

that's what I was going to ask I was going to ask you know what's the process because to me you know I know you know there's been a lot of discussion I don't personally think that well anyway I think that one of the ways to be profitable because obviously people are not building these or running rentals as charities right people do this because it's profitable that one of those methods that would actually have a return on investment quicker would be for people to be able to do these lot splits build something and then sell it

I think we should explore maybe even helping finance lot splits. What would that look like? Well, it's kind of expensive just because you have to get a title report and a surveyor and get it recorded. But a lot of lots in Eureka are pretty no-brainer. They're on a street. It's a rectangular lot. You just need to add a line. You know, it's not super complicated. So I can foresee us helping people through that process better than we are now.

I would be interested in that being kind of looked at more in detail and discussed with everybody.

In our mixed use zones, there is no minimum lot size. The only standard is that your resulting lots have to be buildable. Like they have to have a space that you could put a structure on them.

So thank you.

Council Member Castellano. Thank you. Just a couple, appreciating this conversation, council members and staff. Yeah, it seems like the Start a Home Revitalization Act could be a good, like, even maybe partnering with something like the Builders Exchange to sort of put, host an informational session or something just so that more folks are aware of it or other, you know, but I imagine there's probably, Not a huge number of developers that would be able to pull something like that off, but I would think that the Builders Exchange might be a good opportunity to connect with them, but then also any other developers that we know of in the area. And then when we come back with the – I'm excited that the tiny – sorry, the ADU financing is coming back. I would love a report to come with that on the housing trust fund, just sort of like where we're at with that and how – How much funding is in it? Because I know we've seen that as possibly an option that we can use. And depending on how much is in that, I'd be curious if that might be able to support some of this lot splits funding or something else. And then I just want to, there is a group The Artist Space Trust, they do like artists live work models. And I know that they actually worked at the federal level a while back to create some kind of, I forget what they are, but some specific carve outs for kind of like artists live work housing that, you know, and there are some opportunities with Eureka having a cultural arts district. to designate artist housing when we build affordable housing. Still haven't got any takers, but I think it's a cool, it's a very niche thing and is one of, you know, only 24 cultural arts districts in the state. I think there could be some opportunities there. And then, I don't know, I just want to put it on the radar. I had a friend visit recently who lives in Vancouver, who grew up here, who was talking about Vancouver housing cooperatives. And I do think that housing cooperatives create an interesting option for affordability. Some communities, like Davis and Berkeley, have done really well with them. It could be something just to at least talk about how it might work in the city of Eureka.

Thank you. Council Member Moulton?

Thank you. I was curious about when we have some surplus land that's going out to RFPs for development incrementally, and we're doing a few at a time. When we do the next round, is live work housing something that we could add into our request for proposals?

Yes, most definitely. If that's what we want to do, we could focus on that.

And City Manager Slatter, I know you talk to more developers than I do. Do you feel like there's any kind of appetite for that? Is that something that people might go for from a for-profit or nonprofit developer?

I think it's difficult. I think that one of the areas that Councilmember Castellano brought up for artists, so artists and teachers, you're allowed to prioritize and make it specific towards them. So let's say Eureka City Schools was interested in doing a development, they have access to funding that other developers don't have access to. So I think that that makes it more viable. THE OTHER THING THAT IS BENEFICIAL IS THAT YOU GET AROUND CERTAIN ZONING REQUIREMENTS. I BELIEVE LIV WORKSPACE YOU COULD ACTUALLY JUSTIFY AS VISITOR SERVING POTENTIALLY. SO YOU WOULD NOT HAVE TO, YOU COULD HAVE RESIDENTIAL ON THE FIRST FLOOR, WHICH IN THE RECENT DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT IS A LOT MORE PROFITABLE THAN RETAIL SPACE. And so that helps out with it as well. But as far as a private developer looking to do that, unless there's those incentivized programs like for artists or for teachers or for farm workers, because I think all three of those qualify, then you're not going to get a lot of private developers unless that's their bailiwick.

I see. So if we can point to some funding along with it, that would be helpful. Is there anything like that for medical professionals?

No, not currently.

Boy, that'd be helpful.

But there was when Providence was a little bit more financially Well, they had more money. They used to have a whole arm of theirs. That was intended for not only for kind of affordable housing, but also for workforce housing. And that program at Providence has gone away. But that doesn't mean that I can't come back again.

They still have that program. They just don't plan on building anymore in Eureka anytime soon. But they built the Mother Bernard House on 4th Street during this last housing element cycle. And I do know they will partner with developers to like reserve units for their medical care professionals. So I feel like there's something there with partnering with, they are our largest employer. So there could be something there with partnering with a developer to set aside units, you know.

Yeah, when we first looked at what is now the Earth Center, that was going to be a different development. That's opened doors and discussions with us to do exactly that. Whether they're financially able to do that now, I don't know. But they can help with gap funding. I don't think they're going to make the whole development happen. But if there's a developer that's looking for gap funding and is willing to... dedicate some of the space to a hospital or something similar, then yes, that could be helpful.

Okay, thank you.

Any further questions?

Seeing no one, thank you again for that really robust presentation. And this moves us to public comment This is the time for members of the public who wish to be heard on matters that do not appear on the agenda. City Council policy is to limit each speaker to three minutes. Such time allotment or portion thereof shall not be transferred to other speakers. In pursuant to the Brown Act, the City Council may not take action on an item that does not appear on the agenda. Do we have anybody here for non-agenda items? Come on up.

Yeah, I was here about a month ago.

Welcome, Troy.

Hey. I think so. Can you all hear me?

Is the green button? Is it green?

It's on. It's on. Yeah, so I was here a month ago, and I was trying to understand whether or not you're receiving emails from me directly. I emailed the city council a couple different times, and one of the city council, after I was here a month ago, gave me a phone call and explained to me that... my emails aren't actually being received. They're sitting in a spam filter somewhere, wherever that happens. So part of me getting in front of you again today is I am trying to have a dialogue with each and every one of you about various things. And this little thing was about We had a guest that stayed with us at the Carter House and basically had a less than favorable time in Eureka, and that sometimes happens, but part of what I'm trying to say is I want to move the needle forward, whether I'm helping the Film Commission or helping a guest or whatever it may be, but there are some realities that other people see, and it's their experience, so I'm just relating what that experience was, and the The clip of that review was attached to that email, and I sent it to you. And then I came in front of you thinking that you'd received it. Obviously, you didn't. So Renee gave me a phone call saying it didn't happen. But long story short, the guest saw someone buy drugs. use drugs and OD during their time here in Eureka. And that's a serious thing. I've spoken with the police chief and had some meetings there. But I think it needs to be brought to your all's attention that hospitality and what we're doing in trying to make a good tourist attraction for our community is is real. We're trying to do our best as hotel people, as restaurant people, as stewards of the community. But just as a reinforcement of that, I did this, it was over a month ago, there was actually an event that happened two Saturdays near my facility where A break-in had occurred on one of the vehicles associated with our property, and it was a 5.15 a.m. drug overdose that flagged the officer to see the broken vehicle and then give me a phone call because my telephone number is out there for things to get done. So at any rate, I'm going to leave that email in case it does get through the spam filter, or if not, my cell number is on there. I would love to be able to figure out how to communicate with you all. Thank you all.

Thanks for being here, Troy. Hello, Joanne.

Hello, my name is Joanne McGarry. I spent much of the day today in Eureka, although I live in Arcata. But I'm wearing my Golden Rule sweatshirt, and I just want to say publicly that the boat's back in harbor here. And we are really lucky to have this historic boat in our home harbor. So that's one of the things I just wanted to say out loud. But I also want to talk about the waterfront and the cruise ships. And I know that everybody's excited about cruise ships and that's great for tourism and hospitality and all that. I was walking around Old Town today and I'm getting up there in years and I'm wearing shoes to make sure that my balance is really good and that I don't trip and fall. And I did come across some sidewalk issues in Old Town and I pointed them out to the businesses nearby that potentially could be effective. But it makes me think about the cruise ship people who are coming and going into Old Town and we wouldn't want anybody to trip and fall. um on our sidewalks because we haven't maintained them safely so i'm just sharing with you that i had great response from the public works department and when i reported three of those incidences so um you know i just want you to know that i'm walking around noticing things and i'm going to speak up about them and i think it's important for um I mean, Zoran Mamdami in New York City is really inspiring me about he's fixing potholes and doing a whole lot of other fix-its in his big, huge city. And maybe we can get motivated to follow along in that regard. So I just wanted to say that. And finally, I wanted to talk about the Earth Center. And I may have brought it up to you. I know I brought it up at the Board of Supervisors at the last meeting. And I saw that you had the opening to the Earth Center, and I forgot to show up in person. But I'm going to the HTA meeting tomorrow to get clarification, because I came to the design review committee here for Eureka months ago when they were looking at the design. of the earth center and i pointed out how important it was for people like me to be assured that we'd have safe secure bike parking at the earth center and currently i found out that what we're expecting to have is outdoor bike lockers of different sizes which is less than ideal for someone like me who wants to make sure that my bike is secure if i leave it here to take a bus down to ukiah or someplace so I'm going to find out a little bit more, but bicycle and bicycle riders really need to be treated a little bit better in planning in the future. So thank you. Thank you, Joanne.

Good evening. Good evening.

My name is Dave Startery, third generation Eureka, and I got two more here. Trying to make it better before I leave. Speaking of indigenous people, Charlie Moon's Lane by Coast Central. A lot of graffiti, and there's a banded dishwasher in there. A lot of trash at our city. You need to start an adopt-a-block program like Caltrans' adopt-a-highway program. Get a group, a club, put their name on a sign, but it's filthy. And the lobby of the police department has had a broken window for two weeks. And it's going to be another four weeks before you fix it, and that's disrespectful. I wonder why we went through three or four chiefs recently. They don't know what they're facing out there. There's a lot of people getting released by the state that should be locked up. Down in Davis... Seven years ago, a rookie cop named Natalie Corona, her dad was a deputy, and she wanted to be like daddy. And she went through the academy. And she'd been out there about four or five months, and she got dispatched to an accident. Somebody just got by and shot her and killed her just because she was a cop.

And these guys, they don't know who they're facing.

There are a lot of wild people out there, drugs or whatever. And about the same time,

There was an officer in Newman, California named Ranil Singh.

I don't know. He's a corporal. He pulled over a drunk driver. And the drunk driver killed him. Had a little kid. And the drunk driver had two previous DUIs, drunk driving. He shouldn't have been on the road. And he was here illegally. And that's another issue. But he shouldn't have been driving. I don't know. I'm at Grocery Outlet today, and there was a bunch of garbage by the old Mike's there where the guy has his taco truck, so I cleaned it up. And the sign at Grocery Outlet is bent over, and it protects the customers because people come off the highway and are speeding up 7th. So I don't know if you guys can put some dirt or something on it because it just protects the customers. Yeah, that's all I got for you this week.

I hope your surgery goes well.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks for being here. Well, can I say one more thing real quick?

Yep. OK. We need a veteran stand down poster on the wall there. Pete Wright went to high school in 68 with me, and he was killed in Vietnam. So thank you.

Thank you. Hi there. Welcome.

Pretty nervous, you guys. Bear with me. I've lived in your guys' town for about a year and six months. The homeless problem is ridiculous. It is a revolving door where cops, City of Eureka, Uplift, literally they come and take everything away. So, for example, spot him out right now. I was told by the police officer to go over the track. We moved everything over the track. Guess what happened? Different officer came and said, we're going to arrest you if you're on this property. So it's like, you guys don't, nobody wants to see a homeless person, right? Nobody. They look at me like I'm a disease. I can't even get a job in your town because I'm homeless. So what I'm trying to say is the community, the homeless community, we're sick of cops throwing our stuff away, Betty heads taking our shit from, excuse me, taking things from your guys' residence. I talked to a couple of people. I talked to an elderly man. He's like, yeah, people steal from me all the time. I was like, no problem. He's really nice. I said, I'm going to tell him to leave this freaking house alone. Because a lot of, I know, we all know where the problem is. Police, there were seven police cars today down at the, what is it, behind FedEx, that area? Seven police cars. No one arrested, no trash taken, just wasting the police's time. When we told the police that the neighbor has been shooting a gun, and they're like, yeah, he does that. So your police are not, we're homeless, so we're beneath them. So why make a complaint when you're already beneath them, they're already not going to believe you, because why? I'm homeless and you're not. And I'm telling you, there's no trash can outside Grocery Outlet. There's no trash can outside anywhere. So unless we have a car to take our trash, where are we putting it? Can't carry it all day. And the revolving door, what I'm talking about, is with the cops moving us. So now I have to pack up everything that's valuable to me, carry it all on me to go find somewhere to go number two. Or if I'm on my period, it's so horrible to be homeless, disabled, and a female. I mean, it's just, it's horrible. The women's shelter here, you get kicked out for crying. You can ask some of the girls on the streets. Uplift, the guys that drive around the trucks, they pay girls money for private things that were beneath them, so our report goes nowhere.

Thank you. I have 29 seconds.

I love this town. I'm putting my feet down and I'm gonna stand up for, there's a lot of us that are homeless that want nobody stealing our stuff. We don't wanna move because it's exhausting. We're never gonna get ahead if we're constantly moving my bed. I'm constantly moving this. So now nobody knows who's who's and they're stealing it. So it's, and then the stuff you guys donate, blanket.

Thank you for being here.

No problem.

Hope you come back.

Thank you.

Do we have anyone else in chambers who'd like to speak on open public comment? Items not on the agenda? Seeing no one, is there anyone on Zoom? There's no one on Zoom. Okay. So we will close the public comment and we will go to council reports. And we'll go ahead and start with Council Member Bauer.

Thank you. Yeah, no council travel to report, just a lot of family travel. I did get to participate in a Betty Chin fundraiser at the Eureka Muni, which was a lovely time with all those that supported her. I want to thank you all who came out and helped contribute to that event. It was obviously a worthy cause and super fun. And I attended the Redwood Coast Energy Authority meeting, I think it was last week, where we talked about how we could possibly form our own utility. And it's a very challenging topic and much harder than you think. Something that was exciting, yet just realizing that it's probably something we can't do in the immediate future. Just thought you all should know. And I think that's it for me. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Castellano. Thank you.

Let's see. I attended and, I guess, co-led the Yucca Main Street Economic Vitality Meeting. At that meeting, we're speaking a lot about different ways we can kind of just brighten up Old Town, whether from holiday lights to planner boxes to flower baskets. There's also some other initiatives around... streetscape level improvements. I hosted a separate meeting on streetscape level improvements, kind of looking at walkability, art and culture, doing some planning around that. I attended the Earth Center groundbreaking. And then these aren't specific council duties, but I do believe they help inform the decision making I make on council. I attended the Workforce Development Board meeting. And there was a presentation on the housing element there, which was great. the Cal nonprofits board meetings where we're talking about issues that affect nonprofits throughout the state ecosystem thank you councilmember Moulton

Thank you, Mary. Yes, I have no travel, no city-related travel to report. And it's been really slow here at the Train to the Seasons. I wanted to congratulate the Eureka Chamber of Commerce on their upcoming Women's Leadership Conference as a second annual. It's good to see that happening. I met with Jess Pettit from Eureka City School Board, talked about her experience as an appointed official. Looking forward to Arts Alive this Saturday. The first one in September is always huge. I recommend you go out, shop local, shop small. And the Kinetic Classic Kids Kinetic Sculpture Race is September 13th at the Jefferson Community Center. There's still time to get a team together, decorate some bikes and scooters and get that next generation of glory hogs hooked in.

Thank you. Council Member Fernandez.

No, I've got nothing to report at the moment.

No?

No. Oh.

Yeah, I know.

It's been a slow month on my end.

Well, I'll take your time. So let's see. So I have a few things to report. Oh, I'm sorry. But I do have a few things to report. Council Member Contreras-Deloche, I apologize.

Thank you, Mayor. So I have a one-month report since I wasn't here two weeks ago, among other things. So Pathway to Payday, also this morning we had our emergency shelter ad hoc, and got to have some updates later on. Managing Health Clinician, Rosen, will be able to give us a more extensive update on the incredible things they're Over there and some of the things that they one of the grants they got so that was nice to hear that we talked about belay Co the second in a property and how that's coming along with the timeline looks like for that and It's moving around long really quickly the city manager slattery you said around December January of

That's when the units get here in December. And then in January, and this is all contingent upon our dealings with PG&E and others, but we're hoping by February that it's up and running.

Yeah.

So good news all around. And then I met with the AAUW. That's the American Association of University Women. They wanted to talk about SB 1340, which was an anti-discrimination policy. And they wanted to talk about different ways that the city of Eureka could move that forward. And of course, I am going to be done in December. So that'll be something for one of the others to move forward and meet with them about. And then the Harbor 2x2, really interesting conversations around dredging.

Thank you. And for, let's see, I have a few things that I was up to. I did meet with Nick from Providence, and I have a meeting with Providence at the end of next month. I attended the HCOG meeting. I attended the ribbon cutting for Play Street. Oh, my gosh. We should have a Play Street for grownups. It's just so fun in there. It really is. What it is is it's not a daycare necessarily, but it's a place for kids who are differently abled to be able to go and try different things. And it's a beautiful experience. They go on field trips. I encourage you to look it up because it's just that fun. I attended WIAT days, had some great conversations out there, got to see my favorite family, the Kibbe family. I attended the Earth Center groundbreaking. I did traffic management for crews in Eureka. That's always a good time. This year was probably one of the best ones. I've heard that from a lot of people. There were so many vehicles this year. I attended the Kiwanis 75th anniversary and read a proclamation for them. I read a proclamation for Overdose Awareness Month and then attended Cruisin' Eureka, which was on Saturday also. And that is, if you aren't aware, that is a benefit for the Boys and Girls Club. And so that's really an important event. thing to attend if you're a community member supporting our kids is always important i went out and just said hi and saw what the guys were doing from public works they were out cleaning up some clearing some spaces so that safety vehicles can get back into the green belts for more safety for our first responders so that was really nice to see them on working on a saturday Then today I attended, oh, today, today I went to Sorrel Leaf, which is our crisis center for kids that's coming online. It's not coming online tomorrow, but it is coming online. There will be an opportunity for ages 7 to 17. And I'm looking forward to bringing Shireen here for a presentation hopefully next month to talk about it because it's just really exciting, an opportunity where we won't have to send our kids out necessarily. It is different from some of the ways that we send kids out because it is consent, but it does give opportunity for our kids to stay local. and have visitation from their parents and not be torn away. So I'm really excited to bring Shireen forward. Did that with NAMI. I went to the Crystal Symphony and we did a plaque exchange. And I wanted to read, this was given to me from one of our friends out there. This was a letter to the editor. The Crystal Symphony travelers enjoyed visit to Eureka. So this was in the Times Standard on August 30th. On Friday, June 21st, 2026, the cruise ship Crystal Symphony arrived in Eureka and passengers disembarked to spend the day visiting your city. My wife, Daniela, and I, along with two friends from San Diego, spent the morning walking around the town. We bought a painting at the Old Town Gallery and a sweater from the Irish store. We would like to offer a sincere thank you to the volunteers who drove us to and from Eureka, the store merchants who offered a friendly greeting, and the citizens who spoke with us and gave directions. You have a town to be proud of and hospitality galore. Thank you, Eureka. Dennis and Danny Kennedy from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and Mary and Jim McNaughton from Coronado. So I just thought that was really neat. When I was on the cruise ship, I too met a couple of people, and I took them on a little short tour of Old Town. It was really a fun thing to do. So that's actually one of my favorite things to do. And then lastly, that's it. That's the last thing. And just a reminder that I'll be gone next month, and that City Manager Slattery Mayor Pro Tem Castellano will be running the meeting because I will be out having surgery. So thank you, everybody. And with that, we will move to the consent calendar. Notice to the public that all matters listed under this category are considered to be routine by the city council and will be enacted by one motion. Pursuant to city council resolution 201-22, if a member of the public would like an item on the consent calendar pulled and discussed separately, the request shall be made to a council member prior to the meeting. Unless a specific request is made by a council member, the consent calendar will not be read and there will be no separate discussion of these items. I think there might be a couple pulled in. Is that true? Is it G5, G7, and G8? So can we get a motion excluding those three items, please?

Mayor, I move that we approve the consent calendar minus G5, G7, and G8.

Second.

Thank you. And if we could vote, please.

Councilmember Bauer?

There are no adults in the room. Aye.

Five yes votes. Motion carries.

Thank you. So this takes us to authorization of supplemental law enforcement services account SLES fund expenditures F. Will that be you, City Manager Slattery?

That will be Director Millar with any support necessary from Commander Rabang and myself. But Director Millar will be giving a briefing on this.

I'm sorry, is he on Zoom? Because I don't see him in chambers. He is. Okay, thank you. Welcome, Director Millar.

Good evening, and I apologize for keeping my camera off. So the item on consent regarding the SLES funds was put there to appropriate monies that we receive every year from the state to supplement EPD's budget. So what this item is, is simply budget appropriation. And when the chief finds a need that he can't afford in his operational budget, he can write a memo to the city council describing why he needs the purchase. He will follow the city's procurement policy to make the purchase.

Okay.

And if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer.

Thank you, Director Millar. Any questions for Director Millar? Council Member Fernandez?

Yeah, just looking at the agenda summary, I don't see that in here saying that a memo would be written.

Yeah.

Sorry, I was going to say, so if that's the case, then I would like that in there.

Hold on a second. What we'd like to do for this purpose is do this on an annual basis. The reason behind this is to streamline what we've been currently doing. So what we would do is from year to year, you know, anything that should come up with this money that's allocated would come back with a memo. But from year to year, do this on a one-time basis as a part of the budget where this money gets allocated into this account. And then at that time, as a part of that budget, we would bring something forward as to what it was going to be spent on. It's very limited in the scope of what this can be spent on. It's very highly regulated. It's money that comes from the drug task force that is sent out in percentages to each of the participants of the drug task force. And it's to only be used for enforcement purposes. Mm-hmm.

Well, because I see it says here, too, you know, frontline municipal police services. We've used it for, you know, refers to previously the taser purchase, which we approved. And I'm sure it's used for those other type of. What is it? Not logistics materials. And so, you know, can you give me an idea of what else this would be spent on then moving forward?

Right now, there's CMTs, I believe they're called. They're. basically in-vehicle laptops that are used for the in-vehicle laptops. The other was, we'll have Commander Rebang come up so I don't step all over my words.

Welcome, Commander Rebang.

Good evening. The other item was electric bikes for our CSET team.

No, I like that. You know, it's a nice differentiation from the use of the taser materials for bikes. And so that's why I was asking, like, what have we typically spent this on then? And I understand this is, you know, funding coming from the state. It can be spent on anything. I shouldn't say anything, but anything related to enforcement.

I mean, technically it could actually, if the money was there, which it's not, could be used for staffing for enforcement. It could be used for radar guns for enforcement. It could be used for guns for enforcement. It could be used for ammo for enforcement. Anything that is relative to enforcement, it could be used for. And we've used it for a variety of things in the past. But anything that should come under the military equipment ordinance would be coming to you, obviously, and be reported on when it was ever used. But other than that, it's routine purchases. The use of this money, we could use all of the general fund budget for all of these things I'm talking about. So whether it was this fund or the general fund, they could go out and buy all the tasers they wanted. They could go out and buy all the guns they wanted as long as it fit within their budget.

Well, no, no. I'm not questioning that because, again, this is specifically coming from the state for the use of these items. It's coming from the county as a part of the drug task force.

Okay.

Just because I see the California government code. So the first thing I'm thinking is that this is coming from the state, but I'm guessing it's regulated by the state code. Okay. So thank you for that then. About how much do we receive annually from this? And is it such an onerous process to bring this to us each time there needs to be a purchase from it? Like, why is there the change to this now asking for this?

Prior to this, what happened, there was not a revenue expenditure for the SLES fund. We had a, excuse me, there wasn't an expenditure light item for the SLES fund. We had a revenue light item that was kept track of in every budget. Technically by the code, that could be serviced as that memo to qualify for its requirements from the state. And we're going to look at the least... burdensome on staff way of being able to comply with the state and still be able to utilize this money what it's for um so that's why the intent of putting this into a revenue okay i mean excuse me into an expenditure light item coming to you guys during the budget time and saying this is what our expectations are for the money to come there to answer your question about amount of funds it varies but anywhere from 40 to 100 000 depending on what the frequency is and how much money they get from their operations But the intent of this is A, to comply with the state law, but B, to also make it as efficient as possible so that they can do their job.

And so how much did we receive for this budget cycle?

I know that it's not specific to this budget cycle, but there's $125,000 that's in that account right now.

And that's remaining after this purchase of the taser equipment, or this is just what we... No, that's what would be used for that. Okay. That's what I have for the moment.

Any further questions? Okay. Well, we will open this item up for public comment. Is there anyone from public comment or from the audience that would like to speak on this item?

Hi, my name is Joanna McGarry, and I really appreciate Councilmember Fernandez for getting clarification. I think transparency these days on anything that involves concern about where money is spent, especially in law enforcement, it's a good thing for the citizenry to have this memo, and I understand streamlining and efficiencies and all, but Just talking about we get money and we're gonna spend it on this and this is why we're gonna spend it in a memo form you know for us to you know, perhaps go and Question or you know say right on, you know, I just really do appreciate transparency in that regard Thank You Joanne Is there anyone else in chambers who'd like to comment on this item

Seeing no one, do you see anybody on Zoom, Shannon? I see no one on Zoom. So we'll close the public comment and bring it back to council for a motion and second for discussion. Council member Fernandez?

Sorry, I was looking for the recommendation. Yeah, can I just do, I know sometimes we can do that and sometimes we can't, so that's why. Give it a try. I move staff recommendation. Is that, or do I need to say the whole thing? No, you can do the staff recommendation. With the caveat that we do receive a memo.

What's that?

Well, again, it was referenced by Director Millar that there would be a memo issued.

It would be up to council to determine that. The intent was not to do that. The intent was to do this as a part of the budget process. If council would like to vote on that and change that, that would be fine.

That's what I was adding to my motion before it had been. So there was no second as of yet. So that would be my motion, yes. Move staff recommendation with the caveat that.

I just have a clarifying question about the memo.

Could we get a second and then clarify for discussion purposes?

I don't think I need to have a second to clarify the memo or to clarify what I'm seconding. Okay. Sorry. I was just curious, like, what do you, do you mean like an agenda item, like a memo as an agenda item or?

No, just that we would receive at least something communicated to us for what was purchased.

Like an email?

Yeah, that would suffice.

All right, a memo as an email. I would second that.

As a memorandum, yeah.

So we have a motion and a second. Are there any further comments or questions? Seeing none, please vote.

Council Member Bauer?

Yeah, there are no adults in the room. I vote aye. Aye.

Five yes votes, motion carries.

Great, this brings us to G7, operations complex phase one.

So for this we're gonna have Special Projects Manager Marcellin come and discuss. Welcome.

Yes, welcome.

Am I on? It sounds like I'm on. OK. Hi. Hi. I'm Katie Marcellon. I'm a project manager with the engineering department. The agenda item before you is about our operations complex. The city currently has an agreement with Swinnerton Builders, and it's a unique delivery method that the city pursued for this project. And we have not been successful in finishing the remaining work with Swinnerton Builders, which includes the remaining hardscape and paving. So the action is recommended to authorize staff to be able to negotiate with Mercer Fraser to continue that work. Mercer Fraser is currently a subcontractor under Swinnerton Builders. The information that's provided in the agenda summary highlights that the city has rights within the agreement, that if anything happens within the agreement, Changes or termination then those subcontractors are automatically reassigned to the city. So this would be a natural next step We don't know that we would need to utilize that next step We may be able to come to an agreement with Swinnerton builders and be able to execute the remaining work The procurement policy wouldn't allow us to work directly with Mercer Fraser because it's over a hundred thousand dollars so we would need to come to council for that governance in that step and I'm happy to answer any questions. Questions? Council Member Fernandez?

Yeah. I guess I'm just trying to understand the step-by-step, because it sounds like we're almost switching to another vendor or another contractor, but not quite. Am I mistaken? Help me understand. Sorry. Sure. Yeah.

So we are implementing this project in phases. And when the city moved forward to approach the project, we also knew that we needed to build it in multiple seasons because our weather changes in the winter. So we had a construction season in 2025. We had 2026. We're going into 2027. We also have projects that we have awarded. Phase two and phase three is out to bid. When a contractor has a whole scope of work, they are given a number of working days and methods to implement their work. We work with them at that level. Council doesn't always see that, because that's under the direction of the engineering department. And we believe, after meeting with our city attorney and having some representation, that we do have a path forward with Swinerton Builders. However, I need to be able to finish this work in this construction season. I can't continue to delay the work. So if as myself as a project manager I need the remedies to move the project forward the next Logical step would be to work directly with the subcontractor who is currently on the project So it's the case then that that the work hasn't been able to hasn't been finished or is able to be finished by the current contractor and so we're looking to We would, and that's part of the information that's in the body of the report. It says we would be agreeing with them on either a deductive amount or a reduced amount or an eliminated amount. Those are all recorded in our contract documents in the project folder. If we get to a point where we're not able to reach agreement, then we would say we're done with the remaining work. We are closing your contract, and we would move over to work with the sub.

And if that were to become the case, when might those next steps take place? Would it be when... The building season starts again, or would it be before then?

No. Right now, the city of Eureka is scheduled to receive a metal building before the end of September. So I need a place to put the metal building before the end of September. And I need a paved surface because we don't want a very expensive steel structure laying down in the dirt or the rocks. it could happen as soon as tomorrow okay thank you but i really appreciate the questions because there are a lot of things that happen while we're getting the work and executing the work and we don't ever want to withhold that information but it is a lot to unpack and try to share out so i was hoping to give you as much as i could in here and to the public but also preserve the ability for us to work directly with those different businesses and not Overshare because we have a responsibility to work within our contracts, right?

And I'm appreciative of you being able to come and talk with us today because this is one of the larger projects that we've pursued You know in a while I can't say for how long I've only lived here about nine years now but certainly since since I've been here and This this may go to the city manager at this point But I know in the conversation that we had about this there was a potential for cost saving if if we're switching over and so I

I think those are the discussions that Katie, excuse me, Special Project Manager Marcellano was speaking about. That discussion would happen with Swinderton. And what that looks like, we don't know yet. We just know that we need to get this done.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions? Council Member Castellano?

Yeah. First, thank you for your kind of for making a plan to move this forward considering the time sensitivity you may not be able to divulge this but I'm curious if you know I assume that Swinerton knows that this is on our agenda tonight and that they're you know just kind of aware of the plans we're making yeah we're meeting with them routinely and sharing correspondence to try to reach next steps

And I think they are grateful to have worked with the city of Eureka and be a partner. But there are challenges in working in our region. So I think sometimes when people come to our region, they learn some of the nuances of that. So that's the best way for me to summarize.

That makes sense. Well, just thank you for keeping the project moving forward.

Any other questions? Seeing none, we'll open this item up to public comment. Thank you so much. Katie, thank you. Thanks. We'll open this item up to public comment. Is there anyone in chambers who'd like to comment on this item? Seeing no one, do you see anybody on Zoom?

I see no one on Zoom.

So we'll close the public comment and bring it back to council for a motion and a second. And communication.

I move staff recommendation.

Thank you.

Second.

Second.

OK. Any further comments? Council Member Moulton.

I just wanted to echo the gratitude to Special Product Manager Marcellin and the entire staff for making this work. It is a huge project. And anybody who's ever ordered something nationally to get delivered to Humboldt, the reality on the ground is never what people are expecting if they don't live here. So I appreciate your flexibility and helping keep things moving forward. Yes, let's put a concrete pad down before it starts to really rain.

Let's do that. Okay, if there are no further comments, please vote.

Council Member Bauer?

No adults in the room, aye.

Five yes votes, motion carries.

Thank you. This moves us to G8, accept Humboldt Area Foundation grant.

So for this we'll have Managing Mental Health Commission Rosen come and speak to his tremendous efforts with Humboldt Area Foundation.

Welcome.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Before you is the recommendation to accept the Humboldt Area Foundation grant that we received recently for a combination of workforce development, but also to bring in more support to the care team to serve the people of Eureka. We had worked with Humboldt Area Foundation, who was interested in finding more mental health oriented opportunities to fund, and they were gracious enough to grant us that funding. The amount is $20,000 with the idea that we're able to fund two paid intern positions over the course of a school year. This is super important, especially for behavioral health and social work, because many of those intern positions or practicum positions are unpaid, and that really can be a significant hardship on folks who are trying to enter the field. In fact, sometimes it's actually the thing that makes or breaks someone completing their education and getting into the field. And considering we have the shortfall of mental health and social work professionals going into the 2030s that we have, we want to be able to do our part, especially with a local university nearby. So our recommendation would be to accept that grant. And we're super excited to partner with Humboldt Area Foundation and be able to pay the interns that we have.

Thank you. Do you have any questions? Council Member Contreras-Diloge?

And really quickly, too, the reason why I requested that this be pulled is it's not always a matter of questions or concerns, but because of something significant and I think is important that should be highlighted that's really a win or a good thing for a community that I wanted to be able to have it be discussed. And I talked with a managing clinician ROSEN THIS MORNING ABOUT THAT AND GETTING TO TALK WITH US. THIS WAS A GRANT THAT HUMBLE AREA FOUNDATION APPROACHED YOU GUYS FOR, CORRECT, THAT YOU DIDN'T APPLY FOR?

CORRECT. EARLIER, LATE SPRING OR EARLY SUMMER, I FORGET THE EXACT DATE, MYSELF AND LAURA MONTANA WHO IS AN EMPLOYEE WITH EUREKA POLICE DEPARTMENT BUT IS ALSO THE CHAIR OF THE BEHAVIORAL HEALTH BOARD AND THEN LEAH NAGGY WHO IS THE PRESIDENT OF NAMI HUMBLE SAT DOWN WITH HUMBLE AREA FOUNDATION AND SPOKE WITH THEM. Just more broadly around where we see need in the area. And they later approached us with that offer of funding.

Yeah. This is why I wanted this, was because I think it's so significant that the work that you guys are doing through CARE and CSET is so impactful that you're being approached and our city is being approached with grants and philanthropic donations and all of these different things. So that was my only question. I wanted you to come up and brag.

Thank you. Happy to share the awesome stuff that we're doing.

Thank you. Any further questions?

council member Fernandez I know it'll be coming to us at a later date for the positions are approving the positions and so I'm curious when that might be and

We actually finished polishing the positions to then send over to HR for their review today. It shouldn't be too long. Essentially, we're taking the current positions for case manager and clinician that we have right now and just paring down some of the decision-making-oriented language and then converting the titles to essentially care intern one and two. Just I differentiate that there are different intern levels, bachelor's students versus master's students working on their clinical degrees. But that should be soon, I would imagine, possibly even next council meeting.

Okay. Yeah, I'll save my bevy of questions for that one then. In the meantime, let's see, is this a one-time grant? Is it potential for recurring, that type?

There is the potential for recurring. It sounds like Humboldt Area Foundation has some donors that have recurring donations every year. It doesn't necessarily mean that we would be awarded the funding. We would be the recipient of that funding again next year. But they were very excited about this grant because it effectively kind of doubles the value of the grant funding, right? We're not only able to get more people to help citizens of Eureka and Humboldt County, but we're also then able to support people coming into the workforce at the same time. And so that seemed to be desirable.

Right. And I'm appreciative of that. And so that's why I was curious. And, you know, I know it's still early on in the process too. Have we looked at any opportunities for matching for this? You know, you know, it even says in here that a large amount of internships or, or paid internships are uncommon. And so the fact that we're able to offer something, um, which is why I'm going to save the questions for how much we're able to split between two positions and the 20,000, is there a potential for matching to make this something, uh, a bit more livable for folks?

I'd be thrilled if there was someone who wanted to match or if that wanted to get thrown our direction. I certainly wouldn't argue with that. I will say personally, I am not a fan of unpaid internships. And as a behavioral health professional, I think a lot of that comes from the bias that many folks end up doing a lot of unpaid work. I mean, to give an idea, most of the internships require 15 to 16 hours a week for the entire school year. And, you know, you're putting in a tremendous amount of effort. And the positions that they're interning in for social work and behavioral health are not easy positions oftentimes. And so being able to support students coming into that, I think, is critically important for the workforce in the future of behavioral health professionals.

And these positions here, we're limited to 20 hours a week. So these will never, it is an internship. These will never be livable.

wage or livable salary for anybody because their internships would be they can only be temp employees and temp employees can no longer cannot work any longer than 20 hours a week well and i think i'd said more livable and so that's why it's not the expectation you're going to take this position on as a career but it's like something to help you stabilize while you're going through your education and doing something that's mentally and community onerous as well, just because, you know, just as you were saying that, uh, you know, in, in your profession, let alone the medical profession, people are often giving up their time because that's the caring nature of the work. And so, you know, not just in the face to face that you have to do with the recipients of this, but also the case notes, the resources, et cetera, all the backend stuff that nobody's seeing. So thank you.

Okay. If there are no more questions, we'll open this item up to public comment. Is there anyone in chambers who would like to speak on this item? Seeing no one. Do you see anybody on Zoom? I see no one on Zoom. Okay. So we'll bring it back to council for a motion, second, and discussion.

Move the staff recommendation. Second.

Motion to second. Any further comments?

Congratulations.

Yay. Please vote.

Councilmember Bauer?

I'm all alone in this room, aye.

Five yes votes, motion carried.

It's good to know you're not two children in a trench coat.

Okay, so this... This moves us to legislative action correspondence. Do you have any? Councilmember Bauer? Castellano? No? Okay, seeing no one, we'll move this to ordinances and resolutions, bill number 1061-CS, data center moratorium. City Manager Slattery?

My apologies. For this, we have City Attorney Black to discuss. I can give a brief background before he starts, though. Council had brought up in future agenda items for staff to look into data centers and potential for regulating them, and so staff looked at the different ways that we could do so, and based on... The vast majority of the properties that would be suitable for this type of project would be in the coastal zone. We wanted to make sure that we could at least temporarily prohibit them so that we can come back with a more well thought out regulations related to data centers. So whether council wants to completely not have any data centers, are there certain size data centers, are there certain data centers that only use so much water, whatever it may be. So the intent is to bring this forward to you guys if council chooses to approve the moratorium then it would be in place for 45 days during that time frame count staff would come back with a discussion about data centers and how they would like how you guys would like to regulate them and then we'd put that into the process of getting it into our codes and zoning codes in both the inland and the coastal zone but with that city attorney black will describe the moratorium

So it's very clear that data centers are a complex subject because they have impacts in so many different ways in terms of water, energy, water rates, energy rates, disposal of cooling water, different technologies. in all of those areas really and the regulation it's also clear that if this council was interested in citing a data center in the city of eureka I'm pretty sure that you would not want to do so without a well thought out regulatory plan. And if you wish to prohibit data centers because of the nature of our community and the resources that we have, That also would require findings and studies that would be very beneficial to the city to support, to legally support such a ban. So the government code provides that you are empowered to enact moratoria In this case, a moratorium on the siting of any data centers within the city. The structure of the adoption of a moratorium like that is as follows. You are empowered without observing any of the normal rights of passage for a zoning ordinance. You're empowered to enact a 45-day moratorium. without a public hearing and with only the normal agenda notice. And in some cases, on an urgency basis, you could even adopt one, you know, overnight at a special meeting if there was that type of crisis. In the present case, we don't have that, but we do. We would benefit from a 45-day look-see period. And then you're empowered with a public hearing. Again, with the required four-fifths vote, but with a public hearing ahead of your consideration, you could adopt a further extension of the moratorium for up to a year, and then in a year, you could then adopt another extension of up to two years. I am researching whether there's a method that rather than doing that in two steps, it could be done in one step, that that may be an option to go from the end of the 45 days to a two-year limit. You cannot go beyond that two-year limit. So, to take this seriously, there is work that's going to need to be done both within the 45 days and within the two years. But if you adopt this tonight, you do need a four-fifths vote. And if you believe you're interested in a continuation of this moratorium for the one or the two-year period, we would need to be prepared to take action on that within 45 days. So we're probably looking at the first regular meeting in October.

Thank you. Do you have any questions for City Attorney Black, Council Member Castellano?

Thank you, Attorney Black, for bringing this before us. Just so it's clear to members of the public, because I know this is a sensitive matter in the community, there's no one who's currently trying to implement a data center here in Eureka.

We don't have an application, but we have had inquiries for properties that are within city limits for data centers.

Okay, great. Good to know.

Thank you.

I had a clarifying question. Would you please just, like, define data center? I mean, I understand what we're talking about here, but just for clarity's sake, just define. What differentiates a data center from a building that has a lot of servers in it for a different reason or for a specific reason?

Well, I think data centers are generally associated with the AI project. in which you can type a simple question into chat GTP or one of the other AI applications or programs and you hit the send button and that question that you've typed or the set of criteria and circumstances that you have entered in, goes out to computer storage banks, not, I think, not physically dissimilar to the other type of computer center that you described, but then the computers go to work and there's a tremendous amount of power being used, a tremendous amount of both electricity and computing power. There's a huge amount of cooling that's involved because those processes include, incorporate a lot of heat. So I don't have a precise definition of data center. But I do think we are talking about banks of computers in stacks that occupy warehouses, in some cases, you know, acres and acres worth of computing power on racks being cooled and being powered.

I can appreciate the broader concept of data center and how they are cropping up around different places. What I'm hoping to do is draw a line between The other reasons why, well, first, people can run AI on lots of things. Large language models or machine learning models can run on all kinds of computers, including your phone. They don't necessarily need a server farm to do it or a massive amount of electricity or water to do that. So simply having the use or sourcing of AI services be the definition is too broad. And then there are plenty of non-AI related, non-data center related reasons that a business around here might have several computers, several dozen computers, several hundred computers, massive power banks, liquid-based cooling. So how are we stopping the potentially dangerous or detrimental business from getting a foothold that we don't have control of versus just local businesses that use a lot of computing power for either existing or new reasons?

Right. And I think that makes sense and it's a very good question. I think that would be one of the questions we would try to answer in the initial 45-day period and come back to you with greater precision than this ordinance was intended to convey and then if you wish to to adopt a definition as presented during the first hearing on this ordinance or the extension of the ordinance then that hopefully would be in much more detail what you're looking for thank you yes councilmember fernandez

Yeah. Similarly, I think that's, that's what I was, uh, hopeful for, uh, within, well first, so It's the government code that's dictating this 45-day cooling off period, if you will. And then after that, it's up to 10 months and potentially two years unless you come back and it's like, yeah, we're fine. But there's nothing at the moment that we could say, you know, maybe it's best if we wait 10 months or 18 months. We've got 45 days and we can come back and reassess after that. I guess what I'm asking is we can't augment the timeline or can we?

We can't.

There we go.

Okay. So that's the structure of the government code section that is cited here. Okay.

And I'm appreciative of that. And then similar to Council Member Moulton, there is a differentiation, you know, in my mind, and I think in the business of, you know, you have an AI data center, kind of like you laid out, which is machine learning, large language models, etc. But then to Council Member Moulton's point, you do have servers, web services, data services, not AI in that sense, like Cloudflare or Amazon Web Services, which make it so our internet can run. And that needs to be differentiated so that way we're not becoming Luddites, for lack of a better term.

What you just said is a policy thing. And you may want to differentiate the different kind of server farms. And again, you may not because their environmental consequences, resource consequences, rate consequences may not be that different. And you may decide that anything of over a certain magnitude, regardless of exactly how it's characterized or what the use of its information output is, you may want to still discourage that in the city limits.

Okay, and then next I'm just trying to look at this right now because it does Yeah, we just leave it at data center. So it just may be the case that 45 days might not be enough but we'll see by mid-october.

So thank you I can assure you that something will come back to council before that 35 days So those definitions can be brought up we can discuss it not necessarily on Whether it's Amazon servers or whether it's a big company with a lot of servers, it could be solely based off of how much power you use. It could be solely based off of how much water you use. You can regulate a data center and saying if you use this much water, if it's above that, then you can't be here. If you use this much electricity, if it's above that, you can't be here regardless of whether it's for AI or whether it's for just storing data for a personal company.

Right, and I was just using the two companies that I recognized as providing web services, you know, because if you're involved in that sector, you understand those things. Those are two big ones. And so it was less to, like, shame them or put a spotlight on them and more just to say there is a difference between agentic versus data services. So thank you.

Yeah, you'll notice that in the ordinance and the cover memo, It doesn't really reference AI. It's not intended to tie it specifically to that. It's the nature of the enterprise that would be cited here that we're talking about. And it may turn out that we want to make that differentiation, but we don't know that yet.

Council Member Castellano and then Bauer.

Thanks for the discussion. Yeah, just related to the conversation at hand, I'm wondering if we want to include Because as it's written, which is fine with me for a 45-day moratorium, it's going to come back to us soon enough if we want to kind of keep it as a broad definition of data center. But curious if we may want to include a definition of that somewhere in the document just so that it's clear, you know, Yeah, I don't have to define it right now. I could. I mean, a quick search in the internet provides some definitions. But also, because they don't, at this point, it would include a moratorium, whether a data center uses AI or not. Yeah.

Yeah, that was intentional, the way that the term data center is not defined. I mean, it's common in the daily press because of, you know, the political reactions that are going on throughout the county, all different, the country, excuse me, all different kinds of communities reacting to propositions to locate these large facilities. We're just right now leaving it as broad as possible actually. And even within this 45-day period, I foresee our community development department and the city attorney's office working together to come up with a better idea of what's a rational limitation to impose moratorium for over the next two-year period.

And I can assure you that the people who had inquired about data centers, it was a while ago. They haven't come back to us, so there's nothing Imminent or anything like that and I can assure you if somebody was interested in doing a large-scale Data center of some thinking that it would take a much longer to get through the preliminary process in 45 days Which we have to define it at that point.

Thank you Councilmember Bauer

No, I appreciate the conversation. And I think what Council Member Fernandez was thinking about, we all recognize that there's need for data centers just for regular business. I think we're all concerned about just what's necessary to run AI. And those are huge facilities. So my question though is, maybe it's for City Manager Slattery is, If it's going to be mainly a coastal issue, local coastal program, I see us doing moratorium renewals every 45 days. What do you think a reasonable timeline is to get something on the books or through Coastal Commission, something like that?

Well, first of all, the 45 days is just for this one. We could come back the next time, and that will last for 10 months and 15 days. I'm right on that, right? And then at that same time, it may be able to extend for the full two years. But if not, then we'd come back a year from today and extend it for another year. As far as the LCP update, I have... I'm going to go out and say it. I have every expectation that that happens within that two-year period, for sure. And at that same time, I would say more like a year through the whole process. I mean, a lot of it's outside of our control. Once it comes to you, when it goes to the Planning Commission, comes to you guys, it goes to the Coastal Commission after that. So that's kind of the area that's a little bit fuzzy as to whether or not, because we don't control that. But... Two years is more than ample time. I believe to get that process done.

Okay.

Thank you Okay any further questions? Seeing none we'll open this item up to public comment. Is there anyone in chambers who came to comment on this item or who would care to? Welcome Deborah

I'm Deborah Dukes and I pride myself on being a YIMBY on almost everything. However, there are lines and I think this is one. What I know is what I've read in the popular press and I don't want, I think we have issues here with water. We have issues with power. We've had situations where PG&E couldn't even hook up new buildings in southern Humboldt And everything that I have read, which admittedly has come from the popular press and maybe AI slop, I don't know, indicates that people, the rate payers who surround these data centers, however you define them, and I would encourage you to define them very broadly, wind up paying a lot to, in effect, subsidize these things. They're big, they're loud, they slurp water and discharge it warmer than they got it in, and they use a tremendous amount of energy. I recognize I try hard not to use AI, and I also recognize that I have no choice in it. Virtually everything I do every day has some kind of AI involved anymore, whether I like it or not. And I can ignore a little chat GPT saying, would you like me to rewrite that for you? No, I wouldn't. Thank you. So I recognize all this. And I recognize that as long as we're dependent on AI, however you define it, somebody somewhere is going to have to have a data center in their backyard. But this is a hill I will die on. I don't want it here. I look at the Bayshore Mall and I think, oh, somebody's looking at that thinking, wee, look at all that space. Or the balloon track. Yeah. I would urge you to use the 45 days and up to two years as thoroughly as you possibly can to either keep these things completely out of Eureka or with limitations up the wazoo and let them go someplace else. And I never thought I would ever say that in front of this council. But this is something where I recognize we're using it, and it should be somewhere else.

Thank you, Deborah. Hello, Joanne.

I'm sticking around for the later bus my name is Joanna Gary and I appreciate this council as the Board of Supervisors also and even the city of Arcata made a presentation at their last meeting on data centers of which they already apparently have one and there's definite definitely different types of data centers and And so I think a moratorium is a great idea. The longer we extend that moratorium, I think the better. But because other entities in the county are looking at this, I wonder what the value might be in the municipalities and the counties coming together to be on the same page about all this. Because you could be right on the border of a city And this thing could happen. Or another city down the way could approve this, but they haven't been involved. So I just sort of think working together is an efficient thing to do and maybe trying to get those cities and the county to work together on these kind of moratorium issues. I also know that famous Erin Brockovich is very, very outspoken and knowledgeable on this issue. And it would be really cool for us to get her to come up here and talk about it. and help us be educated in what she knows about what these data centers pose to communities. And so I just want to say I applaud you doing this. The longer we put a moratorium in place, the better. And the more we learn, the more we'll know how much we really probably don't want this in our communities.

Thank you, Joanne. Is there anyone else in chambers who'd like to comment on this item? Seeing no one, we'll bring it to Zoom. I see no one. So we'll close the public comment and bring it back to council for a motion second for discussion.

I will move the staff recommendation. I have a comment.

Second. I'll second.

Got a motion in a couple of seconds. Council Member Moulton, you want to kick it off?

I did just want to throw out some direction for staff to consider an impact that hasn't been discussed in here is the public safety aspect, specifically fire risk. large data center data processing centers wherever you find a lot of computers you find high power usage and you usually also find very large battery banks so not just the kinds of walls that you would find in a house or in a city building like for power conditioning but UPS, uninterruptible power systems, or uninterrupted power banks. So just want to throw that into the mix of things to consider in addition to power and water usage is the onsite storage of power and how that could potentially impact fire suppression. Thank you. You?

Councilmember Fernandez?

Thank you for that, Councilmember Moulton, because I hadn't thought about that until you started talking about batteries. It's like, oh, if something were to catch fire, now we're talking about a lithium fire, lithium ion fire, which, yeah. You know, that aside, you know, I'm apprehensive to, I am voting yes on this tonight. And likely for the extension afterwards, it's more the concern of saying no outright to data centers completely because we do have to take into account, you know, the way that we function as a culture, as a society in terms of, hey, here we are streaming this. How does that happen? And those servers are located somewhere else. But again, being the region that we are. What do we have outside of what's somewhere else? So I'm not saying, yes, let's build a 10 story, however long, but let's take into consideration what that would look like much more for the limitations. I think that were discussed earlier, be as restrictive as we can possibly legally, you know, again, that conversation comes later. So that's, that's where I am on this.

Thank you. Council member Bauer.

no i i appreciate uh what council member fran has just said i you know there are practical needs uses of data centers and we use them all the time in everything we do excuse me um but you know if you pay a little bit of attention um to what some data centers look like go to reno head east of reno and you see you know acres and acres of buildings and I think about AI and existential threat that's there for humanity, but also just a practical thing for us to think about is the character of Eureka, right? Victorian village with massive square building on the waterfront. I don't think any of us would want to see that. So there's that component to think about as we move down the road on this. What do we envision for Eureka with these facilities? And I appreciate the staff work on this. And yeah, I hope this leads to a good ordinance and recognizing that data and technology are things we need. I'll be at acres of square buildings consuming a lot of power and water or something. I think we all don't really want to see. Thank you.

Thank you.

Council member Castellano. Yeah, thank you. I, you know, I. Do you think when we bring this back, we need to have some ways of getting. clearly a little more granular and like what what we're limiting and how you know in terms of like size scope like like the amount of power used how that power is generated I mean you know like like I'm not it's not the same but right like the the Blue Lake the the solar field and battery storage and Blue Lake would sort of maybe have similar problems, but actually we can see that that's a real asset to Blue Lake. I want to be wary of limiting things just because they're technologically focused. I'm in a field where I think innovation and technology is also a good thing with benefits, but I do think that there need to be measures and limits in place into what that looks like and the ecological consequences And then also, are we talking, is a data center defined as sort of a standalone unit? What if someone built a tiny tech hub that had a third of it had battery storage? Is that a data center or not? And so there's ways that I think we need to just have an opportunity to kind of better think about what we want to limit. I mean, people... and what that means for the city and sort of our sense of like what is the story we're telling ourselves about Eureka. I do think that technology is a viable opportunity for economic development. Many people are already remote working in technological fields and I don't want us to exclude Opportunity for people to kind of have meaningful jobs in technology based on sort of a flat-out Elimination of the possibility of data centers in their entirety So I think just sort of like the scale the scope the type need to be discussed Thank You councilmember Contreras Deloach

Yeah, I appreciate Council bringing this forward and I appreciate the thought that's going into this. For myself, looking at this, I think it's just that overall overarching theme that communities exist for the human beings that live in them. and that everything should be done with consideration of, you know, what's best, you know, safety and health and other things like that. And so, you know, on this list of things that were brought up and placed in here about massive power consumption, drying and straining the grid, you know, up and down the state, PG&E has said that they were concerned or even that they couldn't commit to providing power to some of the developments, housing developments, Electricity rate impacts. Electricity rates are already astounding. We can build all the low-income housing in the world, but if people can't afford their power bills, their power bills are triple what their rent is. The high rates of water consumption, cooling systems competing with agricultural or other needs, residential. So I think you know, I appreciate everybody bringing this forward I look forward to what the discussion is and you know to councilmember Castellanos point getting granular on all of these details With that in mind that our job is to protect the health and safety first and foremost of the people living in the community and And that in my mind also includes putting exclusions or placing limitations on things that are being pushed whether or not anybody really wants them or not. I'm not anti-technology, but I have been watching what's going on around the country. So I'm glad that we're kind of addressing this ahead of time. Not sure what we can do if that were challenged down the line, but I think it's good for us to define what we want to do and why we want to. And with that, protecting our resources, protecting animal and plant life here and human beings.

Thank you. Any further comments? Council Member Castellano?

And maybe, I'm just thinking here as we're talking, and it's really helpful, the discussion. I do think some of it may be, I'm hearing a lot about resources, power, water, and so that may be something to valuable to kind of bring back like like you know if they're just you know if we want to include basically clear limits on resources that are part of it or what that looks like and you know sort of the typical like what are comparable like water out water use or power use in other industries as well okay anything further

Seeing nothing, please vote.

Council Member Bauer?

No adults in the room, aye.

Five yes votes, motion carries.

Great, and with that, we're gonna take a five to seven minute break. Thanks, everyone. Thank you very much. And we will reconvene the city council meeting September 1st. And we will start with future agenda items. Anyone? Council Member Contreras-Deloge.

City Manager Slattery, I apologize. I cannot remember. I think I talked with you about it. I know I brought it up a little while ago about us doing the shopping or the dynamic pricing, about the preventing dynamic pricing.

Yes.

Did I talk to you about it?

Yes, we talked about it at our thing, yes, and we're working on it with economic development.

So it's coming back in. Okay. I apologize. Busy week. Thank you.

Anyone else? Council Member Castellano?

This may be coming back already anyway, but I'm just wondering if we could kind of have a little update on where we're at with our strategic plan, just sort of like what we planned on, what were our goals for this year and next year, and sort of just like where it was. Yeah, it could be a city manager report, just like where we're at.

I like that.

So consensus? I see Scott's got a thumb up. Okay. So with that, if there are no future agenda items further, we will move to city manager reports.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Tonight we have Director Folger from HR. We've been pretty innovative in HR in doing a leadership academy, which first started out with just staff members from Arcata and Eureka and has now expanded to the region. And Dr. Folger, Director Folger will be here to give an update on the program.

You just got a new title.

Did you just razz me or something? Sorry, I was talking to Pam.

It was totally, it was not intentional.

I'll watch the video later. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Will Folger with the HR Department here to talk to you about the Bay Cities Leadership Academy. And so I'll just go ahead and get right into it. The Bay Cities Leadership Academy, or BCLA, is a leadership program that's designed for current and rising leaders in our local municipal organizations. It serves the Humboldt Bay region and supports leadership development tailored to local government needs specific to our unique area. It's become our regional solution to developing leadership talent within our local government organizations. And it's, of course, designed with our local context in mind, addressing specific challenges and dynamics that our communities face. Is it working? Oh, no. I got to do the arrow.

That's right.

All right, it grew from discussions between the cities of Arcata and Eureka back in 2022. I believe it might have even started in 2021. And so it was Karen Diemer, the former city manager there, and I who kind of worked this idea out. It was launched through a partnership between the two cities where it was sort of co-administered with the goal of strengthening leadership and to address shared regional challenges. And, of course, it was given our location up here on the north coast, These type of academies exist all over the place, but they're tough for us to get to. They're generally in the more metropolitan areas of our state. And because of that, if we want to send folks to go and be a part of a good and comprehensive leadership academy, We got to send them down. They got to drive down, fly down, get hotels and stuff like that. So there's a lot of ancillary costs on top of just the cost of the academy itself. And so that was kind of a driving factor behind it, too, is how can we make it accessible? Looking at that gap in professional development, we were... focusing on designing something that could be sustainable and locally sourced. The cost when we were looking at sending people out of the area, and I just had to update these numbers, the cost for a similar type of comprehensive academy that would spend span the timeframe, the BCLA does cost between, on the very low end, $2,400 per participant to $10,000 per participant and more. And that's just for the program itself, not the ancillary cost of travel. In the beginning, We utilized, I'm sorry, the initial concept was based on the Cascadia leadership training that was hosted by Mary Gelinas and Roger James. And we adapted this curriculum for local government with our specific needs in mind. The first pilot year was in 2022. In 2023, we did some pretty major changes to it and expanded and refined it. In 2024 we finalized what we wanted the core structure to be moving forward and then last year we expanded the group size. Each year we learn a lot from how, from the participants and how it worked and we make adjustments based on a lot of the feedback that we get. But last year, or in 2024 rather, that final, that core structure got a lot of really good feedback And so we've continued that. And again, in 2025, we were reassured that that structure is the way to continue doing it. So the program, like I said, has evolved over the years. And now it's actually expanded to include not just the cities of Arcata and Eureka, but other cities, including JPAs as well. So here are our core program goals, and it's to keep it sustainable, so sustainability relevant. We want to address city-specific leadership challenges. Functionality, we want to impart practical tools and strategies for current issues. Community, we want to build interagency relationships and regional professional networks. And efficacy, and that's to support our local leaders in making bold decisions. And the first four lead up to and support that final one, which is probably the most important. which is by making something that is sustainable and accessible, that is relevant to our current challenges, we are giving practical and functional tools to people and letting them interact with each other around it on current issues that they're dealing with. It builds confidence. People have a network, they have support in addressing barriers, overcoming barriers, seizing opportunities when they come, making bold decisions when it's necessary. And what is a leader if they're not able to make those bold decisions? All right, so we are about to enter our fifth cohort of the BCLA, and we're very proud that it's been going on that long. We certainly kind of took a shot in the dark in the beginning, and we're really pleased that it continues to grow, continues to deliver success, and that the alumni still continue to be interested in contributing to this program. And we get to meet just wonderful people from these, other jurisdictions as well. So this coming year, The following cities that are up there, they're all participating or have expressed an interest in participating. We're still awaiting some applications. The final deadline will be this Friday, the 4th. But we are expecting quite a few more to come in, as well as those JPAs and special districts. I'm also very pleased to share that members of CIRA and IRMA can have access to these grant programs. Both CIRA and IRMA have approved the BCLA under their safety and loss control and their training and loss control grant programs. So that's particularly helpful for some of the smaller organizations with smaller training budgets around in our local area. So what it looks like is an eight full day sessions across eight months. Karen and myself are the lead facilitators, but we're joined by guest presenters and alumni contributors, so there's always a mix of instruction, lots of interactive exercises and peer learning, and of course, We lean much on our participants, too. Everyone who's coming through this program has their own lived experience, their own professional experience that is every bit as valuable to hear about as the instruction from Karen and myself or our guest presenters. And again, the emphasis being on real-world applicability, self-awareness, pushing boundaries, and practicing the strategies that we cover. Gonna give you a quick session breakdown. So starting out, our first session is mainly spent sort of getting the group together, understanding where we're coming from, establishing ground rules and shared expectations, focusing on individual goals and group cohesion, and setting the stage for a collaborative learning environment. based on just making sure that the people are speaking with each other, that we're talking about mindsets, we're talking about leadership styles and creating the foundation that the rest of the program is built on. So the first four sessions, including the starting one, this is what we cover in each session. So there's an overview, introductions. We explore participant goals and mindsets, fixed versus growth mindsets, leadership styles, and the self-assessment of someone's own leadership strengths. We cover emotional intelligence, and we talk about leadership philosophy a lot as sort of a guiding principle. We also get into neurology basics and brain mechanics so that you can become aware of your reactions. We practice listening techniques, things that seem like you know how to do, but when you really break it down into its individual parts, you realize that there are methods that make it much, much easier. Same thing with difficult conversations, giving feedback, your intent versus the impact your words have, and avoiding what we call emotional hijacking. The next four sessions are more about the group domain. They cover these topics generally. So it's developing high functioning teams and eliminating barriers to cooperation, planning and facilitating effective meetings, collaborative governance and inter-organizational connection, and then public speaking. It's message and delivery awareness and how to speak with conviction. And you can see in all these slides, I've got a bunch of pictures. These are all pictures from our last cohort, cohort four, which was our largest cohort. We had over 40 people in that cohort. And again, building on what we learned from each time, we've learned to pare it down a little bit. We're gonna bring it back to around 30 people. It was still a really great cohort, but it was just a pretty big group to manage. The unique elements of the BCL layer that we really do a lot of emphasis on people developing self-awareness about how they're being interpreted and how they can talk with people, particularly through challenging and difficult situations. And figuring out what their sort of philosophy and guiding vision is and how they want to lead people. And of course, getting comfortable with discomfort and empowering decision makers through practicing that discomfort among the group. It's a safe space. Me and Karen take a lot of care to develop that psychological safety within that learning space so that we can put people through rather uncomfortable scenario-based learning so that they become familiar with their physiological reaction to an emotional state, things like that. It's not too scary, but it definitely is designed to trigger some of those responses so that you're aware. Like I said before, the suite of instructors goes beyond myself and Karen, and we always are pulling in new folks. These are some folks that we used in the past. You might recognize them. We have Burke Hay, who's joined us many times, Kristen Wright from NPCC, and of course, Mary Gelinas, who's the founder of a lot of our core curriculum. And there's ongoing mentorship that occurs as part of this as well. We focus on connection over the content because as long as people are connecting over something, we will tailor the content to meet that. And so part of the BCLA, of course, is developing your professional networks and the support that you get from having a strong professional network. and embracing participant expertise and peer exchange. This really makes it easier, even if you're the type of person who is more isolated in your work, or you're a lone expert in what you do, and if you cross paths with someone who does something similar at another organization, you can talk freely about how the challenges and opportunities that you're facing. We also put a big emphasis on practice. So it's ingraining some of the tools that we impart to people through actually testing them out in real time. We have all kinds of tools that we teach people on. And again, leaning into the discomfort, discomfort by design exercises tailored to address current challenges and opportunities. And to actually walk people through something that's really happening or something they're worried about or planning for. um try to sort of scrub it so it's not um too exact but it addresses the the concern they have or the goal they have so that we can work them through it and we do it as a team there's a great picture of active listening practice being shown in front of the whole group between mary and one of our participants We have a lot of interest from our alumni to continue to engage and support the program. As it grows, we have even more people coming to help, which is just fantastic. So we always have a graduation. The alumni come out and support their colleagues who are, are graduating that year. This picture on the bottom is a group of alumni who've come through to help plan for last year's program. So this is cohorts one, two, and three coming together to support cohort four. It's just really fantastic. And to date, we have had, and I think it's actually over, 114 people have graduated from the BCLA in the last four years. So looking ahead, we're gonna continue to build on the demonstrated success and positive impacts that we've seen. We're gonna also continue to augment the program in the directions where we're gonna see those elements grow, and we're gonna kind of trim out the things that don't resonate as much. We're gonna continue to build the alumni network and invest in more trainings for alumni, which we have done, and this might be of particular interest to you. We're going to start next year an academy series for elected officials, board and commission members. Karen and I have heard from council members, board and commission members, as word of the BCLA has gotten out, and as I've made these presentations to this group, that there is an interest in being a part of this program. We've tried to figure out ways that we could integrate elected staff, and it was a little difficult to do, but what we found is that there's enough interest across all these organizations now, or enough of them, that it's not just cities of Arcata and Eureka. There's so many other organizations that have their own boards, commissions, that we would be able to put together a very well-tailored mini-series for elected officials, and that's something that we're working on building out now. And so as we continue forward with this interesting journey of BCLA and our leadership academy, it's I think something that the city of Eureka could be incredibly proud of supporting. Like I said, it started out as a partnership between Arcata and Eureka. But with the retirement of Karen we the city of Eureka and through my office took on the administrative All the administrative burden of making this program go forward. We also hosted at the Warfinger building and we you know, use our staff time to build out this program. Of course, Karen is still very, very much involved and does a lot of work for it. But the city of Eureka is very much sponsoring this event and making sure that everyone around here can have access. We do charge for it, so it's not a freebie that's given out, but it is very, very cheap and accessible when compared to the other similar programs that exist out there. So With that, I'm your humble servant here to deliver this good news to you and happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. Director Folger, do we have questions for Director Folger? Council Member Fernandez.

Thank you, Doctor. Thank you, Director. Could you tell me a bit more of the discomfort by design? I'm curious about that. Because this is something that I have to do with my union members as well.

I'm so glad you asked. So discomfort by design is a term that Karen and I kind of coined for some of these ideas we had about how do we make people practice doing something that they'd much rather not do in a way that isn't going to Totally spook them and but is going to encourage them to feel what they're afraid to feel. And so this is a lot of role playing based scenario based role playing kind of stuff. Everybody's favorite. Which, yeah, exactly. Just you say the word role-playing and you can feel the heat rise in the room. But the scenarios are based on things that are really happening, generally speaking. And there's people watching and we assign roles. And there's various stages of doing this kind of discomfort by design stuff. There's another one on public speaking. Lots of people would rather not ever do that. We have a training element that is designed to basically make people do it, or better stated, entreat people to push their boundaries and do it. And so that's where, in the beginning, we lay a lot of the groundwork to ensure that everyone feels safe. We're not gonna make somebody who really is just not gonna do that, we're not gonna make them do it. generally speaking, people will. They'll come forward after we've laid the groundwork for it to be something that they know they're going to get something out of. So it's very much like interaction interactive and then a lot of immediate feedback and it's based on the toolkits that we explore with them and i can't get into all of it now because it'd take a long time but that generally is kind of what i'm talking about when i say discomfort by design and i i know i saw karen deemer on there as well and so have have we thought about implementing any of this perhaps in the next uh strategic visioning yeah thank you any any elements of what we use for bay city's leadership and you know not to the not to the totality of it but certain elements if i think i think she does kind of incorporate certain elements of it within her uh um training that for the strategic visioning certainly some of it was uh very familiar to me when she was doing it last time But we do, through my office, very short truncated trainings on some of this stuff for city staff. Thank you.

Anything further? So I just wanted to thank you for your presentation. I just, I love how innovative our city is. You know, our city comes up with all these different programs, and they're successful, and it's really, it's great. I just love it, and maybe we have another Helen Putnam Award winner. Who knows, huh?

There's nothing further? Oh, you've got something? Sorry.

Council Member Castellano.

Just a quick question, partially because I know that we've brought this into other components of the city in terms of just a social justice equity lens. I was sort of a little bit imagining that might be part of the series, and I was curious. I know that can be perhaps more contentious, but just sort of like why it wasn't as centered in the programming.

I'm sorry.

I'm not sure I understand the question in the in the programming that you put forward I didn't see anything that specifically Spoke I mean, you know, I guess like is a social justice equity lens threaded throughout and so that's why it's not specifically touched on or yeah You're absolutely right it is threaded pretty much throughout in fact

one of the big pieces of the onboarding of new members is talking through, like when we are creating psychological safety and stuff like that, and when I'm talking about self-awareness, the implicit bias training, and that is woven completely into the curriculum at the outset, because it's crucial not just from a, Social justice over our overarching umbrella, but also for an interpersonal like am I going to be effective in conveying my message? But it is all woven throughout this program. Yes.

Okay.

Thank you Well on that happy note word Oh councilmember Bauer up there

no i thank you i just want to say uh to will and you know everybody involved in this i really like the fact that we're you know trying to cultivate leadership get people you know just to step up because a lot of us retire and you know organizations grow and and age and it's important to really cultivate our upcoming leaders and what you're doing um is super helpful and um Yeah, thank you for doing it. Appreciate it.

It's my pleasure.

Look both ways. And with that, we're adjourned. Thanks, everybody, for staying.